FY2010 Activity Report for the Technology Transfer Office In FY2010 187 Material Transfer Agreements were processed. Of these, 120 are fully executed and 59 are pending . There are two active CRADAs as of July 26, 2010. Negotiations were terminated for eight agreements. Seven EIRs were filed/registered with the NIH Office of Technology Transfer. Work orders issued for patent filing and prosecution tasks numbered 53. The work order estimates (equivalent to obligations) were $234,099.50 for 27 inventions stretching back to 1988. Thus far, 30 invoices were received from contractor law firms, totaling $104,552.59. Three licenses were executed and 6 license applications were received. Royalties of $136,463.27 was received;the net remaining to NIDCR was $44,274.29. A variety of initiatives were conducted in FY2010: High levels of deobligations were discovered in patent expenses. This observation was reported through the SD and EO offices to the risk management group, which formed a working group to study the issue. Our office provided supporting materials to this working group and made suggestions on operational improvements. We are also developing control systems to monitor patent expenses and work product more closely. A marketing method, intended to reach business that may be interested in licensing NIDCR inventions, was evaluated. The plan was issue press releases concerning licensing opportunities, and then monitor responses through vendor supplied marketing data. A test case was chosen and a marketing press release was prepared. Unfortunately, we were unable to get approval to issue the press release through a newswire service (e.g., PR Newswire). An attempt was made to issue a technology announcement directly to trade journals and then monitor web site hits directly. No increase in hits to the web page were observed, indicating that our method to disseminate the marketing information was inadequate. Hence, the evaluation was negative. If approval for press releases is obtained, further tests of this method can be conducted. In response to a new NIH MTA Policy, a NIDCR MTA policy was written to clarify requirements for our investigators. Since the NIH Policy is confusing and has no consistent interpretation across the NIH, outreach efforts to other ICs are ongoing to help identify areas of common interest. A working group was formed;the objective is to provide acceptable options, as understood by the TDCs, for implementing the policy. Revision of procedures to meet policy requirements is expected to continue throughout FY2011.